Aquaculture waste treatment

A water-treatment product used in the oil and gas industry may soon find its way into the aquaculture industry.

Sorbwater Technology and Blue Ocean Technology, both of Norway, have partnered on a new project that seeks to explore the potential of using the former’s Sorbfloc flocculent product in aquaculture.

“We work mostly within the oil and gas industry, but the last half year we’ve also been targeting the aquaculture industry,” said Sorbwater Technology CEO Svein Egil Steen.

After signing the partnership deal with Blue Ocean Technology, testing was soon underway to see how well Sorbfloc would work in tests on water in Blue Ocean’s facilities.

The flocculent product is applied to waste from aquaculture processes and is able to separate leftover feed, feces and other contaminants from the water, which can then be safely discharged, says Steen. Further testing of the product will be conducted in another facility.

If experiments prove successful, the product will add to the green and cost-efficient water-treatment options currently in use in the aquaculture industry.

The challenge, from Sorbwater’s perspective, is adapting their products and scaling up the volume to meet the needs of the industry’s needs.

“We have mostly worked on oil and gas, so our chemistry has been aimed at that,” says Svein. “So we have changed the chemistry to adapt to different contents – instead of hydrocarbons, it is now feces and feed leftovers and things like that, so it’s reengineering the flocculent to fit into this market. The biggest challenge is finding the right chemistry, or engineering the chemistry to fit the system.”